AOL has now released Open AIM 2.0, 2 years after the first step into the direction of openness, the specification of the OSCAR protocol with is used for AIM and ICQ. And it is now also allowed to make money with AIM and even to support multiple protocols in a software (which was not allowed previously – click here for the license). My hope now is that the developers of multi instant network clients will take a look at it and implement also the security features the protocol provides so I can start using ICQ also over insecure WLANs 😉

There is even a competition with some money for innovative usage of the API. The question which arises now, why this move? yes it is a good move, but still why now. Could it be that XMPP is the new rising star? AOL is already supporting XMPP with a test server, which also shows that OSCAR has some functions which XMPP has not (sure also the other way round), but without documentation no 3rd party developer makes use of this extra functionality. Now there is a documentation which may leads to some innovative software pasted on the OSCAR protocol, which would help AOL to protect there investment.